


What Curiosity Has Yet to Discover

by TheGreatSporkWielder



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Curiosity FTW, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Prompt Fic, Space Stuff is Awesome, This is really kind of random
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 15:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/479852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatSporkWielder/pseuds/TheGreatSporkWielder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce and Darcy watch a documentary together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Curiosity Has Yet to Discover

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lia/gifts).



> Lia needed some fluff and asked for a fic with the prompt "Documentaries." I couldn't help but make it about the Mars Science Lab project since Curiosity landed today (well, it's still today for ME, anyway, so it counts). 
> 
> Title taken from President Obama's statement on Curiosity's landing on Mars.

“What on Earth are you watching?” Darcy asked as she plopped down on the couch, swinging her feet into Bruce’s lap.  “Ooh, is this space stuff?”

 

Bruce nodded. “It’s a documentary about the Mars Science Laboratory mission.”

 

“That shit was so fucking cool,” said Darcy.

 

“ _Is_ cool,” Bruce corrected, reaching down to rub one of Darcy’s feet. “It just landed today.”

 

“I know, we had a big Landing Party; weren’t you there?”

 

Bruce shook his head. “I had other things I needed to work on today.”

 

“Meaning you got caught up in whatever stuff you were working on and forgot about it until it was too late,” Darcy teased, prodding his leg with her toe.

 

Bruce just shook his head in denial, but a smile bloomed across his face, and the two of them watched in silence for a few minutes as a scientist from NASA explained some of what Curiositywould be able to do.

 

“When I was a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut,” said Darcy suddenly.

 

“I think everyone does at some point.”

 

“I even went to Space Camp. That was the _shit,_ I’m telling you. I was about ready to live off of that astronaut ice cream.”

 

“That is, of course, the _best_ reason to be an astronaut,” Bruce said dryly.

 

“Well, that and the jumping around in zero gravity in a space suit while humming _Chariots of Fire.”_

 

“One wonders why you weren’t accepted into the program.”

 

“I can’t fly an airplane,” said Darcy, deadpan. “You have to be a _pilot_ to be an astronaut, did you know that?”

 

“I did.”

 

“Oh, and there was also a week in college where I decided that I wanted to major in Biology so I could walk around in a lab coat and feel smart.”

 

Bruce laughed. “You can always borrow mine, if you want.”

 

She grinned at him with a gleam in her eye. “Now, _there’s_ an idea,” she said. “I just might take you up on that one of these days. But anyway,  then I realized that I didn’t know shit about Bio and so I might as well jump over to _political_ science, where I might not be able to wear a lab coat, but my hipster glasses fit right in.”

 

“It frightens me a bit that you’ve made your career choices based purely off the sartorial options available to each occupation.”

 

“Bah,” Darcy scoffed. “And you’re telling me the idea of wearing goggles and flouncing around in a lab coat didn’t influence you even the _teeniest_ bit when you were in college?”

 

“I don’t _flounce,”_ said Bruce. “And, no, it didn’t.”

 

“Liar,” said Darcy affectionately, curling her toes into Bruce’s thigh as she turned her attention back to the television. As computer renditions of the surface of Mars played on the screen, the narrator spoke of the four goals of the mission.

 

“Have _you_ ever been in a documentary?” she asked suddenly.

 

“What?”

 

“You’re a genius, right?”

 

“Will I sound completely arrogant if I say yes?”

 

“And you’re like, one of the top gamma research people?”

 

“Yes, I suppose.”

 

“So…have you ever been interviewed for a documentary?” 

 

“They don’t really _make_ documentaries about gamma research,” said Bruce. “Not unless something ground-breaking happens.”

 

“I’d say turning yourself into a big-ass green dude is pretty damn ground-breaking.”

 

Bruce rolled his eyes at her. “Ha ha. I should have said, ‘the kind of ground-breaking that people _want_ to happen.’”

 

“Aww,” Darcy said, pulling herself into a sitting position and scooting over to Bruce’s side of the couch, hooking her knees over his legs and wrapping one arm around his shoulders. “I’d miss the Other Guy if he wasn’t around,” she continued as she pushed a loose strand of Bruce’s hair off his forehead.

 

“You’re the only one,” he said with a wry twist of his lips.

 

Darcy’s mouth pursed sympathetically. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said, pulling her hands back and snuggling down against his shoulder, tucking her head under his chin. “Ooh, look, Martians.”

 

She felt Bruce’s head turn back towards the screen. “Why the fuck do they make them look so fucking _weird?”_ Darcy blurted as an artist’s rendition of a resident of the Red Planet flashed on the screen. “I bet NASA could just ask Thor if there’s life on Mars; he’d probably know.”

 

“Don’t the Asgardians have some kind of law about telling us things we don’t have the technology to know yet?”

 

“I think that’s _Star Trek;_ and they broke the Prime Directive _all the fucking time.”_

Bruce didn’t reply, just squeezed her shoulders as the documentary ended and the credits rolled.

 

“Now I want to go to Mars,” said Darcy. “Or go be an astronomer or something.”

 

“I’m sure Thor would be willing to take you for a spin to some different planet,” said Bruce. “If you asked nicely.”

 

Darcy laughed. “Now I’m picturing us going to Mars and Curiositytakes pictures of us and NASA is all, ‘ _Oh, my God; there **are** Martians and they look just like us_!’”

 

“And then someone recognizes Thor and suddenly Thor is not ‘the Avenger with the lightning hammer and the red cape’; but an _alien.”_

_“_ Which is actually true, which makes it even funnier.”

 

“And you wonder why Agent Coulson is making you actually _train_ with him before he’ll let you near a news camera.”

 

“Your faith in me is _astounding,_ sweetie pie.”

 

“I do my best.”

 

A preview for the next program came on, and Darcy laughed. “Hey, look, it’s about Norse mythology. Should we go grab Thor so he can tell us everything they got wrong?”

 

“Probably not a good idea,” said Bruce. “He might just take something as an offense to his family and throw Mjolnir through the television as he challenges the poor oblivious expert to a fight to the death.”

 

“Nah,” said Darcy with a careless shrug. “He knows he’s not supposed to throw Mew-Mew in the tower, especially after what happened _last_ time; and he _also_ knows that we silly humans made stuff up about the Asgardians to explain what we couldn’t understand. He’d be cool.”

 

“Okay, then,” said Bruce, “but if he breaks anything, I’m telling Tony it’s _your_ fault.”

 


End file.
